ONCE WAS LOST
THE GETAWAY PLAN HAVE BROKEN UP, MADE UP AND GROWN UP, NOW THEY’RE LETTING THE WORLD KNOW THROUGH MUSIC, DRUMMER AARON BARNETT TELLS DAVE DRAYTON.
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rior to their current incarnation, The Getaway Plan’s consistent development of sound and impressive musical trajectory was already one of interest. Five then very young Melbourne lads in skinny black jeans with floppy fringes and heavy eye make-up cemented their presence in the local scene with the scream-heavy, scram-influenced EP, Hold Conversation. There was radio play, things started moving a little faster and all of a sudden the band were doing national tours supporting the likes of Taking Back Sunday. Like their American counterparts, they culled the heavy screamo influence with the next release, the commercial breakthrough, Other Voices, Other Rooms. There was one less guitarist – the band now comprised of singer/keyboardist/guitarist Matthew Wright, guitarist Clint Ellis, bass player Dave Anderson and drummer Aaron Barnett – cleaner vocals and choruses worthy of the radio play they received. The epitome of angst-ridden screamo a few years earlier were now playing songs on Rove.
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It turns out that we came back to find something we thought was lost. So we’re letting the world know through music.”
And then, come 2009, it was over. The band farewelled fans with a sold-out national tour and all thought it was done and dusted. Then, in 2010 the teasers started with some cryptic online videos posted by the band. And then the announcement: they were back, with a new album in tow to boot. “A lot of the album is referring to us breaking up and getting back together, growing up, realising a lot of things,” explains drummer Aaron Barnett of the new album, Requiem, “And it turns out that we came back to find something we thought was lost. So we’re letting the world know through music.” Barnett talks about the album – and the band’s vested in it – on a grand scale; an approach that has coloured every minute of the album’s construction, from the aforementioned cryptic teaser videos, to employing producer David Bottrill – the multiple Grammy-Award winning man behind Silverchair’s Diorama and Muse’s Origin Of Symmetry – to spending months in Toronto writing and demoing the album before its recording. “It sort of became our home. When you’re there doing what we were doing for a long period of time like that, you try and make it as comfortable as you can and we settled in really well to the neighbourhood and the house was beautiful and after a while it just became normal life to us. Of course you want to come home, you go through stages – you miss it, you get sick of it – but I think when we came to actually packing up and leaving we all got a bit sad.” The Getaway Plan are committed to Requiem; it is a requiem for the band that was, a token of remembrance for the band that burned out and a statement of intent for what they have – and hope to – become. “Obviously we’ve grown up a lot since the first EP. Then after the album we had two years off in which we all grew up a lot again, so there’s definitely a slow progression of change throughout the songs. I think this record, if you listen to it from start to finish, it takes you for a ride. The first couple of songs have a hint of the old stuff and then things move along and kind of reflect Other Voices, Other Rooms and then towards the end of the record there’s songs like Heartstone that have a hint of the direction we might be heading in and the big, more worldwide sound. Hopefully it takes off the way we want it to because I think it’s got the potential to reach a lot of people’s ears.” The new sound is, if nothing else, big. It is soaked in string orchestration with further instrumentation including flute, French horn and oboe. There’s not one, but two choirs featured on the album – one gospel, one children’s. Barnett credits Bottrill for fleshing out the songs, helping to create the expansive sound the band had envisioned. “We had two or three weeks doing pre-production in a rehearsal studio. We had a week by ourselves just getting what we had done into shape and then Bottrill came in for a week or two and made the songs what they are; structurally what they are now. When we were looking for producers we just put Dave’s name out, we didn’t even think we’d have a chance of getting him and then he said yes. We were into what he’s done obviously and it fitted in with what we were trying to do with this record and straight off the bat he came into the pre-production room and he knew. He was on the exact same level as we were on the songs and he knew where we had to go with it and how we had to do it. And it turned out amazing. They were rough ideas; Matt had a picture of what he wanted to happen with extra instrumentation. They were pretty much just rough MIDI sort of strings in there, so he had an idea and we could show David and the other musicians we had working for us over there where we wanted to head. With that stuff we just sat down with them and showed them, told them where we wanted to go with it and let them do their own thing on it as well. It worked out really well because we wanted a big-sounding record and the people we had writing those extra parts were bloody incredible.” The obvious question is whether the band, at its core still a quartet, can reproduce the new material live. Barnett laughs, admitting a shaky beginning. “First show we had doing some of these songs was at [Brisbane’s] Big Sound. We only had a couple of days jamming to figure out how we’re going to pull of these fucking songs live and first rehearsal was pretty rough to say the least, but we’re jamming pretty good now. For what the show was it turned out alright.”
FEEL PRESENTS
SATURDAY 10TH MARCH THE GAELIC HOTEL TICKETS ON SALE 4TH NOVEMBER
AVAILABLE FROM FEELPRESENTS.OZTIX.COM.AU, PH: 1300 762 545 OR IN PERSON AT ALL OZTIX OUTLETS
WHO The Getaway Plan
Also touring J MASCIS • BLACK JOE LEWIS
WHAT Requiem (UNFD/Warner) out Friday
SEE WWW.FEELPRESENTS.COM FOR FULL DETAILS
WHEN & WHERE Saturday, Fisher’s Gig; Friday 25 November, Metro Theatre; Saturday 26, Cambridge Hotel; Sunday 27, University Of Canberra; Thursday 26 January, Big Day Out
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THE DRUM MEDIA 1 NOVEMBER 2011 • 41 •